SkyEye

(Un)Common Star Names

What's in a Name?

Stars have many names. Throughout the ages, people have devised numbering or lettering systems to identify stars within a constellation. A given star may have a different designation in every catalogue in which it appears. However, in addition to all of these identifiers, some of the brighter stars have proper names as well; names like Arcturus or Polaris or Rigel or Sirius or Vega. Most of these names have been handed down from antiquity via Arab astronomers but a few have been coined as recently as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Beware any company that claims to name stars for you. Such names have no official sanction and are not recognised by any scientific body.

Ancient and Modern Names

Below is a list of common (and not so common) names for certain stars. Historically, the spellings have varied slightly from source to source and not everyone has agreed on the original meanings, but beginning in 2016, the IAU has approved the following names: